Menu for Hope 6 raffle winners

Monday, January 18, 2010

So here it is, the results of our sixth annual Menu for Hope – with the help of two hundred bloggers, two hundred and four delectable items on our raffle list, and in the span of just over two weeks, we raised $78,898.00 in support of the UN World Food Program. Yes, nearly $78K, in a recession year no less! Not bad at all. And none of these would be possible without your support – food lovers, businesses, bloggers, and our readers and supporters from all over the world. A huge big shout-out also goes to our wonderful, hard-working hosts without whose help Menu for Hope 6 wouldn't have existed – Alder of Vinography, David of The Sweet Life in Paris, Ed of Tomato, Helen of Tartelette, Shauna of Gluten Free Girl, and Tara of Seven Spoons.

Now that I'm done with thanking the academy, let's get to the fun part. Check out the list of our raffle winners below to see if you've won anything. If your name is on the list here, you'll be receiving an email about how to claim your prize in the next day or two!

AP01 Greek Cookery: From The Hellenic Heart by George CalombarisRoger Smith

49 Responses to “Menu for Hope 6 raffle winners”

January 18th, 2010 at 1:08pm

Hello,
I just came across your blog and enjoyed it very much. I’m a banquet manager and write a blog about the daily aggravations that go with my job…from cranky chefs to nasty customers and everything in between. I hope you enjoy it. Please visit and leave a comment. Have a great day!So You Want To Be a Banquet Manager

o.w. said:

January 19th, 2010 at 6:37am

January 19th, 2010 at 10:13am

Pim – thanks so much for spearheading this fundraising effort. I can only imagine that it was a ton of work, but obviously a labor of love. I didn’t win anything this time around… maybe next year! All the best to you in 2010.

January 19th, 2010 at 1:57pm

January 19th, 2010 at 11:03pm

Well done Pim. Excellent work indeed! WOW…

Rob said:

January 19th, 2010 at 11:17pm

Same as last year – a few people won a number of prizes. While I trust the money is going to a good place I have to wonder how the drawing process is handled. I think it should be managed by a group of people, not all of whom are in the same blogger clique.

January 20th, 2010 at 3:22am

Well, it is possible that the people who won multiple times might have bought a whole bunch of raffle tickets (imagine if you donate say $2000, that’s 200 raffle tickets so the chances of that person winning is higher than someone who donated $10). Let’s not forget this is for a good cause.

January 20th, 2010 at 9:32am

January 20th, 2010 at 9:34am

Thank you for defending us! You are definitely right. Some of those people donated a few thousand dollars.
Also, if you only picked from the items that only got a handful of bids from the bottom of the list you’d have a better chance at winning as well.

January 20th, 2010 at 9:52am

Also, we double, triple checked the raffle picker code to make sure it worked properly. And it did, so the repeats are definitely pure chance. Though someone may have better chance by donating more $ or simply chosing prizes from the bottom of the list with fewer bids.

January 20th, 2010 at 10:51am

Anybody questioning how one person can win so many items needs to go to the FirstGiving pages and look through the bids. Check how much the multiple winners bid (thousands, in some cases), and take note of what they bid on — typically they’re cherry-picking items with a low number of bids.
If you haven’t done this, and you’re casting aspersions, you should be ashamed.

January 20th, 2010 at 1:48pm

The first time Pim and I noticed these seemingly odd multiple wins, I did some research and some tests. The short version: an even distribution isn’t all that likely.
Here’s the full post I wrote about my tests:http://www.obsessionwithfood.com/everything_else/2008/01/randomness.html
I also posted the source code for the raffle program at:http://programmingobsession.blogspot.com/2010/01/menu-for-hope-source.html
(as Jen notes, I’ve posted it before, but this is the current version, which has accrued some slight bug fixes/features over the years)
And I’m happy to answer any questions about the process (in brief: Pim sends me the spreadsheet when MFH closes; I clean up the data based on the errors my program tells me about and through an inspection of my program’s output for each line; and then I send Pim the results [in text and HTML])
Both Pim and I excuse ourselves and our immediate families from the raffle, and I generally don’t even pay attention to the winners. I just skim over the final results to see who won items that I wished I could bid on

ori k said:

January 20th, 2010 at 4:01pm

o.w. – here’s what you can do next year:
1. Close to the end of the contest donate a lot, relatively speaking (you can do so anonymously until Pim rats on you )
2. Assign subjective value to rewards (e.g. 1/2 lb of truffles are worth to me their retail value, other prizes are worthless to me regardless of their retail value.
Assign costs to the rewards that are proportional to the number of bids on them (e.g. a reward that has 100 tickets bid costs 10x as much as one that has 10 tickets)
Find an optimal solution given the costs and values, sprinkle with some random speculative bets for good karma.
For example, if there are only two awards, one is worth $1000 and has 1000 tickets on it and the other is worth $100 and has 50 tickets on it, then the optimal way to split 1000 tickets is to find:
maxArg(1000*(t/(t+1000)) + 100*((1000-t)/(1000-t+50))
which I think leads to placing 914 tickets on the first reward and the rest on the second.
This ends up being 27% better than just splitting the tickets evenly in the example above, I’m sure the improvement is even lower for the Menu for Hope raffle, but at least there’s some professional satisfaction in doing the right thing.
You can guess I don’t write poetry for a living.

nudnik said:

January 20th, 2010 at 5:03pm

where’s the code for randomDraw()?

Judi said:

January 20th, 2010 at 5:07pm

Pim & Derrick & everyone who hosted – you all do an amazing job. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. I bet most of the people who donated would have done it even if there weren’t any prizes.

January 20th, 2010 at 5:33pm

January 20th, 2010 at 9:52pm

Ha. It was below a test method, so I didn’t notice it when I copied and pasted all the code.
/** Makes a random draw from a List of strings */
private static String randomDraw(List items) {
// precision loss, but we’re not expecting any numbers greater than
// MAX_INT
int i = (int)Math.floor(Math.random() * (double)items.size());
return items.get(i);
}

January 20th, 2010 at 9:54pm

January 22nd, 2010 at 10:54am

Pim-Great job with the Menu for Hope. I am sorry to read the posts from people questioning the drawing process. I was lucky to win 2 prizes this year, but last year won none. I am definately not in the “in” group of bloggers. I do have a question-I heard from one of the prizes, but not the other. Haven’t heard from EU03 Wine and Cheese lunch at O Chateau in Paris. Do I need to contact them?

January 22nd, 2010 at 12:13pm

How exactly do we claim our prizes. I have not heard anything yet and wanted to make sure you have my contact information.
Thank you for a wonderful program. Great work.
BTW…to those questioning the drawing process. I only donated $40 and am not part of the food bloggers “clique” and still won what I perceive to be one of the more highly sought prizes. I appreciate it very much.

January 28th, 2010 at 11:52am

January 28th, 2010 at 11:57am

This email was resent Jan 26. There was no bounced email. Not sure why you haven’t received it. (The latter parts of the email address were removed to protect your privacy.)
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Pim Techamuanvivit
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 8:23 PM
Subject: EU02 “2 tickets for the “”Tour de France of Wine”" at O Chateau in Paris”
To: olivier[..], annechwartzdc[..]
Hi Anne Schwartz,
Congratulations! You are the winner of Menu for Hope raffle ###
Please contact our blogger Olivier Magny [email] to claim your prize.
Thank you so much again for participating in Menu for Hope, with your support we raised $78,928 for the UN World Food Program. That money will help support many small farms and feed many hungry mouths. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Have a great 2010,
Pim and the Menu for Hope team

Nicole said:

February 1st, 2010 at 2:39pm

Actually not everyone has gotten their e-mails, I still have not received an e-mail about my prize and now my comment that I posted a couple of weeks ago has also disappeared. I had posted for you to please let me know if you didn’t have my contact information. Is there any way you can e-mail me and let me know what is going on? Sounds like you are having some trouble with your website.

FBC said:

February 3rd, 2010 at 10:56am

February 4th, 2010 at 1:30am

Hi Pim, I’m having similar concerns about the emails – while I received emails at the beginning of last week about the prizes my boyfriend and I won (we are very appreciative!), I unfortunately still haven’t gotten a single email regarding the person who won the prize that I offered (UW42, the Sustainable Sushi package). I’ve checked my spam folder, but there haven’t been any emails from you or from Herb, the prize winner. I’d really love to ship him his prize but unfortunately without any contact information, I can’t do anything yet.

February 13th, 2010 at 3:51pm

The email address for the winner of UE 39 bounced, the address left in the form is brooke@clndaniel.com. If you’re the winner please email me at chezpim at gmail dot com with your correct address and I will connect you with the prize host. Thanks so much, Pim